Electronic Voting: Command Central

There's an excellent article by the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op about one of the major suppliers of electronic voting technology in Wis., Command Central:

Forty-six Wisconsin counties and 3,000 voting machines are being controlled by a two-person company operating out of a strip mall in Minnesota.

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In his report of his experience with the November 2010 gubernatorial election for Scott Walker, John Washburn, an election integrity investigator and professional software tester for almost 20 years, states, “I have been to dozens of voting system test sessions and have never seen any of this faux ‘testing’ actually test the voting system software correctly. This is the professional opinion of a software tester testing software since 1994.”

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Last September, Election Integrity investigators discovered that . . . Command Central sent those 46 districts an offer: trade out your old Optech Insight Scanner for two DRE Touch Screen models, at no charge. The Optech machine is the one that paper ballots are fed through to read and register the votes.

While these machines are also susceptible to hacking . . . it is possible to physically monitor the paper ballots as they are fed through the machine to see if they match the machine totals.

With DRE Touch Screens, however, one’s vote could be flipped and one would never know because there is no receipt or paper trail voters receive to confirm their vote was counted as voted. . . .

And according to John Washburn, this swap-out two-for-one offer violates the statutes issued by the GAB for State approved system as described on the Government Accountability Board’s website that requires the inclusion of an Optech Insight Scanner.

On January 13, 2012, Washburn emailed the GAB about this situation. When he did not receive an answer, he submitted an Open Records request to the GAB, with no reply. On May 2, he submitted another, again to no response. On May 4, he turned the case over to Dane County Attorney, and on May 14 he kicked it up to the Department of Justice.

Much more at the link. Similar situations now exist not only in other states but around the world.

(Earlier companies supplying electronic voting technologies, such as Diebold and ES&S, are gone, or at least their names are.)

Rebecca Mackinnon: Consent of the Networked

If you don't read her book, at least watch this:

(Another irresistible re-blog from Boing Boing).

Gene Youngblood Re- the New Art of Video

Long but worth it; via Phil Morton; shot at SAIC; sorry I have no further background; but I found Youngblood's discussion brilliant and prescient of later developments in contemporary art in general, as well as in video.



(UPDATED to add:) Partial transcription below by Shane Mecklenburger (the segments are not necessarily in the order spoken in the video; emphasis supplied):

‎" ... expanding the domain of your possible descriptions. The more your domain of possible descriptions is expanded, the less one description can control your behavior; the less you will believe any particular description about reality."

"Alienation is about not being able to see your meanings and values reflected in the world in which you live. So there's always this distance between you and everybody else and the world and you're kind of disjointed. And ok, you can live with that, but ... once in a while you have a non-alienated experience where you're just high and you just become one with something else, like you see a work of art or you meet a person and there's no distance, and that's 'you.' I see myself in you, I see myself in this: No more alienation. I maintain, which is not very profound because every other anthropologist and sociologist does, that alienation is an intrinsic product of modern industrial society, necessarily so, because it's all about centralized mass production and mass distribution, which necessarily must ignore individual values and preferences. How to solve that? It seems to me that you've got to have some filtering device between you as the 'receiver' and the source as the sender ... the complex things it allows you to do is realize your own personal identity through a medium that is basically intended to wipe out your identity."



‎"process me."

"There are no grounds for a common ethics except for a desire to have one. A desire which springs up in all of us as a result of living in a world of strife, controversy, hatred, so forth ... if we do have [a common ethics] it must now simply constitute an arbitrary decision of how to live, then the question becomes 'how are we to make that decision?' My answer is, first of all through a decentralized, user-controlled communication network, through which people could dialogue and exchange their values ... and over a period of time, and only through a system in which the users control the dialogue ... there is also emerging a common ethic, because what happens is common ethics emerge out of a domain of common experience. To the extent that you and I have a similar history of interactions, we may have a similar history of desires ... Desire is an industrial product. You can only desire what you are given. You can only choose from the set of possible choices that's held before you. So as a result of habituation, of enforced habit, we have all come to have a desire for whatever's on TV... so we learn one thing: common desires come from common histories, so the question then becomes, how to generate a domain of common histories without it becoming imperialistic; without it subordinating everyone like we do now with the mass media, and saying 'there is only one set of experiences that you can have and this is it'? This will determine that we all have a common history and therefore common desires, but there's got to be another way. To me the way is a decentralized user-controlled feedback communication system ... and then organically what would emerge out of this process, organically and naturally from the long-term behavior of the people, an organic ethic which would not be imposed upon them by the structure of some imperial system, but which would be educed out of us by this very adaptive system, a system which adapts to each individual user's needs."

‎"am i positioned correctly in the video domain?"

[This is spoken by someone else, not Youngblood, and is not transcribed as precisely] "yes, i tune in on it as exemplified by CB Radio, which at any time is user-controlled and it is a constant, ongoing dialogue situation. Which politically can only be described as anarchy, because no one ... if someone tries to dominate ... everybody can flip and go to another channel and say 'fuck off' ... and so the whole thing has this kind of constantly moving, uncontrolled except by the moment of use of what is happening in the system right now ... I realized ... there were rules that were supposed to be followed, the FCC will get you, blah blah blah, and all of a sudden i found out that nobody was going by the rules that were advertised. Everyone is going by the rules as they are constantly changing all the time right now. And that the best organizational description that I could lay on it is that this is anarchy. And it's working. And I had always heard that anarchy is this terrible thing and it can't work."

Youngblood responds by saying, you can govern by either attenuation and absorption, attenuation meaning that government prohibits activities it can't handle, and absorption meaning that government adapts to allow activities as far as possible, regulating them so far as necessarily to be able to handle them. But this kind of adaptation is only possible through "these tools" – such as the processor being used to manipulate the video of this conversation.

The State of the Union

B.O. was doubtless engaged in the same ritual just a bit earlier.



The ensuing speech may be observed here.

Future Attribute Screening Technology

No joke. More at Wikipedia.

Chris Hedges

is a Pullitzer-winning journalist who resigned from The NYT when he was told he could not keep his job there while publicly opposing the Iraq war (more at Wikipedia).

The video below is long but well worth the time. Don't stop watching after Hedges stops speaking the first time; I found the other speakers worthwhile, plus Hedges delivers additional brilliant stuff during subsequent Q&A.

A couple of Hedges' many insights:

[W]e forgot that the question is NOT, how do we get good people into power. The question is, how do we limit the damage the powerful can do to us?

Most people attracted to power are at best mediocre, and . . . often [are] venal. The true correctives of American democracy never achieved formal political power [e.g., those who fought slavery, the suffragettes, the labor movement, the civil rights movement -- none of these ever attained formal political power]. By 1968 Martin Luther King was the most important President this country [n]ever had . . . .

Acting Locally

Ever wonder if you should pay more attention to state and local governmental affairs? If you live in TX, The Texas Tribune can help, first by providing coverage of such matters, then then by helping you identify and contact the appropriate reps or authorities, here.

Jim Schutz on the Fiscal Impossibility of the Trinity "Park"

(in Dallas), here.

Maybe it comes down to a simple typo: they meant "pork," not "park."

UPDATE: What becomes clear from KERA-TV's new documentary, Living with the Trinity, is that regardless of whether any Trinity projects are completed, there's plenty of money to be made half-building them.

Facebook As Surveillance Tool

By Evgeny Morozov at NPR.org:

"A trusted colleague . . . has told me of a very disturbing episode . . . as [a friend] was flying to Iran last week . . . , she was asked by [immigration control] officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said "no", the officers pulled up a laptop . . . . They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends.

"[First, this] means that the Iranian authorities are paying very close attention to what's going on Facebook and Twitter (which, in my opinion, also explains why they decided not to take those web-sites down entirely – they are useful tools of intelligence gathering).

"Second, . . . we have to be fully prepared to be quizzed about any online trace that we have left . . . .

"Third, this reveals that some of the spontaneous online activism we witnessed [in Iran during] the last few weeks - with Americans re-tweeting the posts published by those in Tehran - may eventually have very dire consequences, as Iranians would need to explain how exactly they are connected to foreigners that follow them on Twitter (believe me, I've observed enough bureaucratic stupidity in Eastern Europe to know that even some of the officials who follow Twitter activity on a daily basis may not know how it works)."

[Emphasis supplied.] (Thanks Dan!)

There is, of course, the equally dangerous likelihood that governmental and/or commercial Big Bros. know very well how Facebook and other online facilities work and are already actively mining at least some of them.

Even if you don't care about your own privacy, note that what you do online or elsewhere could affect your online friends. (And, what your online friends do, online or elsewhere, could affect you.) For more, enter "Facebook" in the "Search Blog" box in the upper left corner of this page.

Facebook and Twitter Now Blocked in China

per my friend there, 'cuz of the Han – Uyghur rioting in Xinjiang. See The NYT for the full story and how the Chinese government controls internet access there.

More than Half of the World's Largest Economies Are Corps., Not Countries

Based on a report for the Institute for Policy Studies, for example, General Motors, Wal-Mart, Exxon, and Ford are bigger than Poland, Saudi Arabia, Finland, or Venezuela.

Who needs allies; easier to deal with corps., which are often much less answerable to their supposed constituents.

Leading Surveillance Societies

Bigger image and more info here.

Big Brother Has Biometric Data on You (or Soon Will)

I'd prefer to focus my posts more on art and trash, but these days, that's not easy.

According to The Washington Post, the FBI, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are cooperating to create recognition equipment coupled with a vast database of biometrics that would enable them to capture or identify images of people's irises at distances of up to 15 feet and faces from as far away as 200 yards. The database will also retain fingerprints and palm patterns, scars, and perhaps characteristic ways of walking and talking.

The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks, "so the employers can be notified if employees 'have brushes with the law'" -- i.e., any contact with the law whatsoever, whether you’ve actually done anything wrong or not.

Director Lawrence A. Hornak of the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research, which has been awarded a contract to further develop the system’s recognition capabilities, says, "The long-term goal" is "ubiquitous use" of biometrics. As WaPo put it, “[a] traveler may walk down an airport corridor and allow his face and iris images to be captured without ever stepping up to a kiosk and looking into a camera . . . .”

See also engadget and the U.S. Department of Justice, indicating that in 2006, the same or a similar system was projected to cost U.S. taxpayers $1 billion.

Another good reason to get yourself a gas mask, preferably with mirrored lenses -- and if you plan to protest, don't leave home without it.

(Thanks, Craig and Ben!)

Pranksters Obtain Multiple I.D.'s from Virginia Officials

Remniscent of the Boston Mooninite scare:



Like the Virginia DMV, most governmental organizations cannot function without citizens' willing cooperation.

Mozi was a Chinese philosopher who lived ca. 430 B.C. His followers advised rulers that the people must see that their leaders govern fairly and in the interests of society as a whole. If the people do not approve of their leaders' decisions, they will resist, and disorder will ensue, which is adverse to everyone's interests, including the leaders'. (See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

The U.S. Declaration of Independence declares that the governments instituted among us "deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed" for the purpose of securing our fundamental human rights, and that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it . . . ." [emphasis supplied].

We're smarter and much more numerous than our leaders; you'd better believe we have the power to replace the bad ones.